A consistent bedtime may be more important than sleep quality or duration when it comes to a child’s behavior and emotional control.
A child’s attitude and behavior are greatly influenced by sleep, as many parents can confirm. However, maintaining a regular bedtime might be more important than the duration or quality of sleep.
Children who followed a consistent bedtime schedule and went to sleep at the same time every night showed improved conduct and emotional control, particularly when dealing with stress or social situations.
In the Penn State Intervention Nurses Start Infants Growing on Healthy Trajectories (INSIGHT) project, the sleep and behavior data of 143 six-year-old children were analyzed by a team led by Adwoa Dadzie, a biobehavioral health doctorate student (1✔ ✔Trusted Source
Associations Between Sleep Health and Child Behavior at Age 6 Years in the INSIGHT Study
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Role of Responsive Parenting in Child Behavior
In the longitudinal INSIGHT study, mothers of newborns were trained in responsive parenting, which focuses on providing a warm, prompt, and consistent response to a child’s physical and emotional needs.
Respondent parenting training from infancy and early childhood can help minimize childhood obesity and promote healthy sleep. Dadzie says this latest analysis from the study shows that regular sleep timing continues to have benefits.
Children who had consistent bedtimes were generally able to regulate their behavior and emotions. On the other hand, children whose bedtimes and sleep times were all over the place showed more impulsivity and less control.
Children in the study wore a monitor on their wrists for seven days to measure their nighttime sleep and activity. The devices monitored multiple aspects of sleep
- Time the child fell asleep
- Time the child woke in the morning
- The midpoint of sleep timing
- How efficiently the child remained asleep
- The total amount of sleep the child got each night
- Associations Between Sleep Health and Child Behavior at Age 6 Years in the INSIGHT Study- (https:journals.lww.com/jrnldbp/abstract/9900/associations_between_sleep_health_and_child.221.aspx)
These data were compared to the child’s performance on a task designed to see how they responded to frustration. Each child selected a toy that they wanted to play with from a large selection.
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Effect of Consistent Bedtime in Child’s Self-Regulation and Social Behavior
The chosen toy was placed in a clear box and locked. The child was given a set of keys, none of which unlocked the box. The researchers then observed the child for self-regulated behavior — including self-talk and trying each key — and a lack of self-regulation including throwing the keys without trying them all. After four minutes, the researchers returned with a working key and allowed the child to play with the toy.
The researchers also watched the children decorate a picture frame with their parents. Children’s behavior was identified as prosocial if they engaged in cooperative activities like sharing and cooperation or antisocial if they destroyed craft supplies or talked back to their parents.
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Results showed that the more a child’s bedtime varied each night, the worse they regulated their behavior and emotions. For example, a child whose bedtime varied by 20 minutes a night over the week of the study typically displayed more self-regulation than a child whose bedtime varied by two hours across the week.
Parenting matters. When parents establish clear structures and respond to their child’s needs appropriately, children have better outcomes in weight regulation and behavior — even years later.
When children in the INSIGHT study were six years old, they returned to the College of Medicine for more evaluation. The current study on bedtime and behavior used data from that visit.
“The results indicated that sleep regularity is important for prosocial and age-appropriate behavior in children,” Dadzie said.
The researchers said that some parents — those who work evenings for example — might not be able to participate in a bedtime routine with their children, but those parents can still take steps to parent more responsively.
“Every parent can establish clear standards and routines for their children,” Buxton said. “They can respond appropriately and promptly to children’s needs. We now have eight years of research on the INSIGHT project demonstrating that when parents are responsive to their children, they raise healthier children.”
Reference:
Source-Eurekalert
